Dr Keith Walker @SteelFolk@qoto.org

In an important development, civil servants of conscience in Germany have finally joined their peers in other countries and published an open letter calling on their government to stop exporting weapons to Israel.

This should terrify the genocide enablers in the German government, because it means there is a pool of whistleblowers available to shred their excuses to bits and confirm that domestic laws and reports of Israeli war crimes were consciously ignored, greatly increasing their individual legal exposure at The Hague.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/7/german-civil-servants-demand-immediate-end-to-israeli-arms-supplies?traffic_source=rss

Does international law really exist?

When it is asserted that Israel and Russia are in breach of international law, it means—or should mean—something

By me, at @prospect_uk

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/65614/does-international-law-exist-david-allen-green-israel-russia

The narrative around Universal Basic Income often gets twisted into a saga of laziness. But here's food for thought: UBI will be the most significant productivity booster we've yet to embrace. Freed from survival stress, innovation and creativity will flourish like never before.

Our Wikipedia page is at risk of being deleted because it may not meet notability guidelines.

Can we get some help?

We're not that familiar with Wikipedia or its processes, but we think our project is notable enough for inclusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixelfed

#pixelfed #wikipedia

Lots of the proposals for fixing #healthcare #cybersecurity focus on equipping #hospitals (or penalizing them for attacks).

But as the #Change outage shows, third-party vendors pose a huge risk.

“Even if we spent every dollar of our budgets on cybersecurity, that still does not eliminate the majority of cyber risk that comes to us from third parties.”

@STAT's Mohana Ravindranath on what's next:
https://www.statnews.com/2024/03/29/change-healthcare-attack-proposed-cybersecurity-regulations/

#health #medicine #MedMastodon #healthpolicy #unitedhealth

Shell abandons 2035 emissions target and weakens 2030 goal.

Cynical victim blaming from a major fossil fuel polluter:
“if society is not net-zero in 2050… there would be significant risk that Shell may not meet this target”. This is familiar language from the oil major, which frequently explains that it is consumers, not Shell itself, that influence fossil-fuel use. —Carbon Brief

https://www.carbonbrief.org/shell-abandons-2035-emissions-target-and-weakens-2030-goal/

Does this happen to you?

I was advised to never ever use childcare responsibilities as a justification for unavailability, e.g. when rejecting meetings at late hours. Well, because, someone could think that I am not serious about science or that my kids are more important to me than my science, or something like this 🙄

But when a male colleague tells about skipping a meeting because his child is sick, everyone goes like "ah, he is such a good father!" (and a good scientist of course, anyway)

These are leaf sheep (Costasiella kuroshimae). They live in the sea, grazing on algae.

Are you based in the UK and interested in #teaching #statistics (in the #lifesciences but even outside!)? Would you like to discuss #challenges and #strategies with other people from different disciplines?

Then we invite you to a #workshop based upon a cross-UK survey of undergraduate teaching in study design and data analysis for #Biology, #Biomedical Science, #Medicine and #Psychology. The workshop aims to critically examine teaching practice with an eye on improving research reproducibility as a part of science reform.

What can you gain from the workshop?

- Cross-disciplinary perspective on the challenges faced and approaches to overcome them, and solidarity that comes from openly discussing challenges;

- Resources for teaching/to influence teaching of stats in an attendees’ own institution;

- Opportunity to benchmark your teaching programs versus those nationwide;

- Opportunity to gain “outside the box” (cross-discipline) perspective on why and how to teach study design and analysis;

- Knowledge of approaches and software people are using across UK to do/teach data analysis.

The workshop will occur *12 June*, 2024, at the University of Manchester. We anticipate the fee will be less than £20 (and will most likely be free)

Below, we provide links to (1) view the workshop's itinerary and (2) to sign up to indicate your general interest (we are gauging interest at the moment for organisational purposes; registration will follow).

Link for itinerary:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fj_VN3_bJ9H1kXpXqFjVqPR6Kbg5ErVFq7iKldlltu0/edit?usp=sharing

Link to indicate interest:
https://forms.office.com/e/yfTsyPe49e

============================

Organising committee:

- Crispin Jordan (University of Edinburgh)
- Nicola Romanò (University of Edinburgh)
- Kasia Banas (University of Edinburgh)
- Vanessa Armstrong (Newcastle University)
- William Kay (Cardiff University)

"Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”

and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”

and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay."

-a 15yo autistic girl experiencing ABA therapy

WTF is going on with UK Labour and UK politics in general?

Brexit has shifted the Overton window so far to the right that Labour are now Thatcherites, and the Tories are full blown fascists.

https://www.politico.eu/article/margaret-thatcher-david-lammy-visionary-labour-united-kingdom/

More stress and pressure thrown at exhausted and overworked HE workers

UWE Bristol has announced 100 voluntary redundancies. They’ve also issued a section 188 notice for compulsory redundancies in due course. Nightmare situation.

Already overworked underpaid staff are offered 1.5 wks pay per yr of employment. VC on apprx £370k and recent restructuring has increased £100k+ management notably.

The uncertainty for us, as staff, and our students is unbearable

@ucu

#Bristol #UKHE

Holy crap. In the EU, fuel consumption monitoring devices are required on new cars. They studied over 10% of all cars sold in 2021 and turns out they use way more fuel, and generate way more CO2, than anybody thought. Nearly a quarter more. Plug-in Hybrids do poorly too.

This means our projections about getting cars off the road for the climate crisis is hugely undercounting the effects. More rail, more e-bikes, more electric, faster.

#ClimateCrisis #CO2 #TheWarOnCars
https://mastodon.ie/@sinabhfuil/112138746226813931

Eye #agate a captivating gemstone, is named for its mesmerizing patterns that resemble eyes. These "eyes" are formed by alternating layers of differently colored minerals, such as chalcedony, quartz, and jasper. Read more here:

https://www.geologyin.com/2024/01/eye-agate-properties-uses-formation.html?fbclid=IwAR0VIGP9oq9KVXdeJNk7_OQ7mTL4BZB4CJ_29azpXnvMb6QcD31EuOittAs

By #GeologyWonders
#Geology #GeologyPage #Nature #minerals #crystals #gems #Nature #NatureLovers #NaturePhotography #Photographer

Wildly different circumstances, of course, but both Post Office and Afghan war crimes inquiries show how weak ministers are in their own departments.

Post Office ministers were fed false information, Mercer was not given access to information he was asking for.

And as parliamentary accountability requires ministers to be responsible to parliament, there is a huge system failure.

Ministers cannot be meaningfully accountable if they are given false or no information by their departments.

GIGO

#SilentSunday #Skye #Scotland

„It’s estimated that in 2023 the heat content in the upper two thousand metres of the oceans increased by at least nine zettajoules. For comparison’s sake, the world’s annual energy consumption amounts to about 0.6 zettajoules.“

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-is-the-sea-so-hot

Electronic advertising is a climate crime that makes our public spaces more hostile

The giant screen at Euston Station boasts of saving energy, while using more electricity than the average street, just to serve us adverts we didn't consent to see

https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2024/03/electronic-advertising-is-a-climate-crime-that-makes-our-public-spaces-more-hostile/

Have a look at our simulation of the air-sea #CO2 flux and surface wind speed in a high-resolution #EarthSystemModel model ICON 👇
https://youtu.be/63NZSPjxv6w

I find September particularly fascinating in this animation. A hurricane in the Western Atlantic entirely messes up the CO2 flux. Here, the immediate effect is that the hurricane enhances the outgassing of CO2. Behind it, the flux swaps the sign and there is uptake of CO2.

#ilyinaScience